After three months on the job, Brian Schwartz says he’s starting to settle in as the manager of Lone Pine State Park, where he has found a “balance between exercising my mind and exercising my body.”

The former warden and park ranger took over the post in early March, replacing Amy Grout, who headed up the popular park near Kalispell for the last eight years. 

In addition to the 270 acres of Lone Pine, the manager also oversees West Shore and Lake Mary Ronan state parks, which helps keep Schwartz out of his office as he zips around the valley’s western edge to do check-ups each day.

His first day of work was March 7, and he said it has been a smooth transition, but not without a significant learning curve.

“My predecessor was very good at a lot of things, and she left everything well set up for me to take over,” he said of Grout. “But I do feel kind of like I was given a bowling pin, a glass ring, a flamethrower and a chain saw and told: ‘Now juggle.’”

After five years working as a warden for the state, Schwartz is still adjusting to the office duties required of a park manager. However, he said he ultimately wanted a position where he could work with the public more directly, and looks forward to having more time in the fall to spend hunting and fishing with his children.

“I liked the warden job, but I really enjoy telling people about recreation opportunities more than anything,” Schwartz said. “I like interacting with people that enjoy playing outside — whether it’s sharing their experiences, identifying plants or telling people where the good fishing opportunities are.”

A native of Northern Minnesota, Schwartz grew up playing football, baseball and rugby but eventually realized that outdoor recreation was his calling. 

That seed was planted by his grandfather on a trip to Maine when Schwartz was 13, and his grandpa challenged him to spend a night in the woods by himself.

“They were placing bets on when I would chicken out and come back, but I made it through the whole night,” he said. “It was an unforgettable experience for me that connected me with camp.”

He honed his love of the outdoors when he met his future wife in high school, going on regular canoeing and camping trips with her family in the region’s renowned lakes. At Mankato State University, he pursued a degree in recreation, parks and leisure services.

During that time, he worked for the Army Corps of Engineers and then moved to Whitefish after graduation, organizing local sports including softball, youth soccer and special events for the city’s recreation department. After a stint as a park ranger back in the Minnesota, he returned to Montana to be a warden with Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Now he has less ground to cover, but far more details to tend to. Of the state’s 55 parks, Lone Pine had the sixth-highest number of visits last year, with 88,495 people stopping by, according to Montana State Parks statistics. 

Schwartz oversees about a dozen employees and all of them are currently busy ramping up for a summer filled with activities for a range of visitors.

“The biggest surprise for me is how many people here in the community just love this park,” he said. “If there’s any change, we get questions.”

When the location of a major archery tournament changed slightly from previous years, Schwartz and his staff put up flagging around the area to demarcate where the event would take place. The locals took notice.

“We got a lot of questions. I don’t know if they were more concerned about new trails or logging going on, but I was surprised at how much response there was,” Schwartz said. “Still, I’m also thankful that people feel comfortable coming and talking to us.”

And he gets a lot more than questions. 

After vandals tagged one of the cliffs overlooking the valley earlier this year, Schwartz said a local mountain climber asked he could help remove the paint. He volunteered his time and skills to erase the damage in a place park employees wouldn’t have been able to safely or easily access.

Schwartz is clearly impressed with the amount of local involvement that goes toward keeping the park a top resource for visitors seeking a quiet piece of nature just outside town. 

Volunteers turn up almost every weekend to help with programs and park maintenance, AmeriCorps provides educational programs the park wouldn’t otherwise be able to offer and local businesses and organizations regularly contribute to different projects around the park.

“A lot of this job is reaching out to communities close to the parks,” Schwartz said. “These are big vacation destinations, but we also make sure we’re serving the communities’ needs.”

Schwartz isn’t looking to radically change anything at Lone Pine or any of the other places he oversees, but he does have a few ideas on how to improve the experience for visitors.

For one, he would like to improve the wintertime offerings at the park, pulling from his experience in Minnesota. He’s considering adding evening programs and workshops during the darker part of the season, with activities such as making wooden paddles and stringing snowshoes. And while it’s just in the brainstorming phase at the moment, but he said he’s open to the idea of overnight stays at Lone Pine in yurts or cabins.

“To me, a really cool thing to do someday would be to snowshoe into a yurt in the middle of winter up at Lone Pine, and just be able to look down over the valley,” he said. “Obviously, that would be a long way off, though.”

With bear season underway, he’s also been considering the idea of a fish house-type facility at Lake Mary Ronan. The park is a popular fishing destination, but that also means a lot of bear attractants being left in the area after anglers clean and fillet their catch.

He added that he’s still determining Lone Pine’s paragliding policy.

“The other day, the off-the-wall request I had was when someone came in and asked about paragliding off the cliff,” Schwartz said, with a laugh. “It’s different from BASE jumping, which is a big ‘no,’ but when it comes to having fun in the outdoors, everyone has their own ideas, and I don’t want my knee-jerk reaction to be saying that people can’t do something.”

Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.